[IsraelTimes] Asylum seeker Abderrahman Bouanane, who last year went on stabbing rampage in Turku, said to have acted alone, reacted to Syria bombardments.

Finnish police say the Moroccan asylum-seeker who killed two people and maimed eight others in last year’s stabbing attack in southwestern Finland identified strongly with the Islamic State...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... group and was motivated largely by hatred after heavy bombardments by the Western-led coalition in the Syrian city of Raqqa.

Whatever. Jihad is its own excuse — no other is needed.

Olli Toyras of the National Bureau of Investigation said Wednesday that Abderrahman Bouanane

This would be the gentleman who previously identified himself to the Finnish authorities as Abderrahman Mechkah, age 18. He arrived in Germany in 2015, where he was picked up in a number of cities for illegal entry and criminal assault, and gave a number of aliases before moving on to apply for asylum in Finland in 2016. He went on a knifing rampage when it became clear Finland would not grant him asylum, though he seems to think this is not terrorism. The police stopped him by shooting him in the fleshy part of his upper thigh, or thereabouts.

became radicalized some three months before the August 18 attack in the western city of Turku, and although he acted alone, he thought of himself as an IS fighter.

"We don’t think any group is being involved in this," Toyras said, although adding that the suspect’s phone and computer contained IS-related photos and material. "He has seen himself as a fighter, a soldier, a man of IS. He would have liked IS to have taken credit for the attack."

On the day of the attack, Bouanane had bicycled from Turku’s outskirts to the city center, bringing along two kitchen knives he had taken from a friend’s home.

He attended prayer at a local mosque before he started a stabbing rampage in Turku’s main market square that lasted some three minutes and left two women dead and eight others ‐ six women and two men ‐ maimed.

Toyras said Bouanane, born in 1994,

...which would make him a fully adult 23 or 24, not the boyish 18 he claimed on his asylum request...

had picked his victims at random. His initial target had been a Finnish soldier waiting at a bus station but he abandoned the plan as too risky.

Toyras said Bouanane had keenly followed earlier terror incidents in Belgium and La Belle France, was willing to die for "a martyr cause" and was waiting to be rubbed out by the Finnish police.

The suspect came to Finland in 2016 and saw later his asylum application rejected. But police said that was not considered the main motive.

Following the attack, police discovered a manifesto posted online by Bouanane that was strongly influenced by Moslem and IS world views and contained disparaging references to Western religions.

The case is being investigated as two counts of terror-related murder and eight counts of attempted murder with a terror-related motive.

State prosecutors are expected to file official charges by the end of February.

[DAWN] Four coppers detained for their involvement in the alleged extrajudicial killing of 27-year-old aspiring model Naqeebullah Mehsud pleaded not guilty"Wudn't me." before a court in Bloody Karachi...formerly the capital of Pakistain, now merely its most important port and financial center. It is among the largest cities in the world, with a population of 18 million, most of whom hate each other and many of whom are armed and dangerous... on Wednesday.

Police had informed the court in an initial report that assistant sub-inspector Allahyar, head constables Khizar Hayat and Mohammad Iqbal, and constable Arshad Ali had wished to confess to their involvement in the abduction and killing of Mehsud.

When the four coppers were presented before a judicial magistrate, they refused to confess to their involvement in the murder.

The magistrate in his report submitted to the administrative judge of an anti-terrorism court said that police had been ordered to present the suspects before the court on a request of the investigating officer, however, the coppers pleaded not guilty.

The police officials told the magistrate that they had been "trapped" in the case and that the real culprits are some other people.

The four men were among six police officials &dash; sub-inspector Mohammad Yasin and assistant sub-inspector Supurd Hussain being the other two &dash; who were presented before the ATC today.

[DAWN] A large group of Jamaat Ulema-e-Islam...the political wing of the Pak Taliban... Fazl (JUI-F) workers gathered at the Mardan Motorway Interchange on Wednesday to protest an Anti-Terrorism Court's (ATC) verdict in the Mashal Khan murder case.

The crowd rolled their eyes, jumped up and down, and hollered poorly rhymed slogans real loud against the slain Mashal Khan and vowed to "move the Supreme Court against the verdict".

Talking to DawnNews, a JUI-F worker said that they had congregated there to "welcome" the 26 "heroes" who had been acquitted by the ATC earlier today.

JUI-F workers gather around the car of one of the 26 acquitted people as he arrives in Mardan. &dash; Photo by author
Six of the acquitted had reached Mardan, two had gone to Swat ...a valley and an administrative district in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province of Pakistain, located 99 mi from Islamabad. It is inhabited mostly by Pashto speakers. The place has gone steadily downhill since the days when Babe Ruth was the Sultan of Swat...while others were on their way, local sources said. One person, who was released by the ATC earlier today, was welcomed and garlanded by a jubilant crowd as he got off from a car.

Addressing the crowd, JUI-F's provincial general secretary Maulana Shujaul Mulk said that "this issue [of Mashal Khan's verdict] will not end here". He also criticised the government for supporting the verdict.

Another provincial party leader warned that if the government did not release the convicts that were sentenced by the ATC, JUI-F will hold protests and added that the party "will not sit quietly [till the convicts are released]".

An ATC in Haripur jail had announced its verdict in the Mashal Khan lynching case earlier on Wednesday, handing one person two death sentences, five persons multiple terms of life imprisonment, and 25 others jail sentences, but acquitting 26 others for want of sufficient evidence.

Normalization appears in the distance, like the light at the end of a tunnel that is not an oncoming train.

Baghdad (IraqiNews.com) Iraqi Prime Minister has discussed along with Syrian foreign minister coordination on efforts to open the border exit between the two countries.

A statement by the media office of PM Haidar al-Abadi said the two officials, discussed boosting security cooperation between the two countries." This came after Abadi receiver Syrian Minister Mohammed al-Sha’ar.

"Coordination on efforts to open Qaim border between the two countries has been discussed," it added.

Sha’ar arrived in Baghdad on Tuesday within an official visit, during which he met with several Iraqi officials.

And vice versa, of course. But unlike yours, Israel’s don’t ever land in the wrong side of the fence.

A Gazoo-based group associated with the terrorist al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades on Sunday posted a video clip showing its members produce 120-mm mortar bombs and threatening that Israel is "within range of our shells."

The video, translated by MEMRI, the Middle East Media Research Institute, shows how mortars and the explosive shells that they propel are assembled and put in position to fire.

The Nidal al-’Amoudi Battalion, one of several in the coastal enclave linked to Paleostinian Authority President the ineffectual Mahmoud Abbas... a graduate of the prestigious unaccredited Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow with a doctorate in Holocaust Denial...’s Fatah faction, credits the video to its "Engineering and Production Unit."

Al-Amoudi, after whom the splinter group is named, was killed by Israeli forces in 2008 after carrying out a series of attacks against Israeli civilians and soldiers during the Second Intifada between 2000 and 2005.

Its parent organization, the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, is based in the West Bank and designated as a terror organization by the US, the European Union...the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, only without the Hapsburgs and the nifty uniforms and the dancing..., Israel, Canada, and Japan.

This is dreadful. Simply dreadful. Really, there are no words for how dreadful this simply is.

[Ynet] Ex-Paleostinian intelligence chief suing PA after revelations of large-scale CIA wiretapping of prominent Paleostinians, both allies, rivals, of Abbas; suit may prove embarrassing for PA president in light of Paleostinian anger at US since Trump's Jerusalem announcement; Abbas also facing accusations of increasingly authoritarian rule.

A former Paleostinian intelligence chief and the head of the West Bank bar association are suing the Paleostinian self-rule government after a purported whistleblower alleged the two were targeted, along with many other allies and rivals of President the ineffectual Mahmoud Abbas... a graduate of the prestigious unaccredited Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow with a doctorate in Holocaust Denial..., in a large-scale CIA-backed wiretapping operation.
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[IsraelTimes] French foreign minister Jean-Yves le Drian says the French citizens who fought with the Islamic State...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... group before being tossed in the clinkDrop the rod and step away witcher hands up! in Syria or Iraq will be judged by local authorities.

Speaking to BFM TV channel, Le Drian says that about 100 fighters have been captured in northeastern Syria by Kurdish fighters.

Le Drian says they will be tried by "local authorities" and won’t be repatriated to La Belle France "because they are enemies who fought against Syrian citizens, Ottoman Turkish people. They have raped and committed barbarian acts."

He adds that La Belle France’s doctrine regarding children was different, with the French government aiming to send them back to their country with the help of the Red Thingy.

According to Le Drian, six families of French fighters have also been arrested in Iraq

US recruits to the Islamic State...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... group struggle more than their European counterparts, lacking support networks and field experience and being assigned to menial jobs, a report on American jihadists said Monday.
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.

Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.

Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.